


a kiss in time

by ninemoons42



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Birthday, Birthday Fluff, Bucky Barnes Big Birthday Bash, Canon Compliant, Cuddling & Snuggling, Fluff and Hurt/Comfort, Inspired By Tumblr, Inspired by Music, M/M, Memories, Photographs, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Recovered Memories, happy birthday bucky barnes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-10
Updated: 2015-03-10
Packaged: 2018-03-17 05:46:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,266
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3517667
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ninemoons42/pseuds/ninemoons42
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve wakes Bucky up at midnight to share a private (yes, private, everyone else got shooed away) celebration. There is cake. There are photographs. Bucky remembers something.</p>
            </blockquote>





	a kiss in time

**Author's Note:**

> > Tuesday is Bucky Barnes’ … 98th? 99th? THANKS FOR KEEPING YOUR CANON STRAIGHT, MARVEL???? birthday! And I think we can all agree he’s probably within the top ten of our favorite ninety-somethings, even given the hilariously large sample I personally have to choose from.
>> 
>> ANYWAY I was thinking what if I wrote a dumb stupid happy fic for my precious freezerburned crazy eyed angel. Then I thought, WHAT IF A LOT OF PEOPLE DID and while I am 1000000% too late and tired to organize it, if u write something tag it, idk, ‘Bucky Barnes big birthday bash’ and if posting on ao3 is a thing you do, I will set up a collection tonight. Anyway HAPPY FICS possibly involving BABIES AND DOGS and definitely probably SUPER HUGS FROM SUPER HEROES and then we can have them all. To gloat over.
>> 
>> \-- lazulisong, http://lazulisong.tumblr.com/post/113116038931/hey-kids
> 
> So here's mine. 

“It’s me.”

A mostly familiar voice, but he’s heard those before, and Bucky knows his hand is halfway to the knife he keeps between the two layers of mattress, and -- 

The hand that lands on his shoulder is a hand that he knows. More than the calluses, the steady warmth of the grip: and Bucky forces himself to relax, forces a deep breath into his lungs, and turns over slowly. Opens his eyes and looks up: and all the stars in the sky are concentrated in Steve’s eyes, in the lines echoing Steve’s smile. 

A smile that looks half-apologetic. Bucky reaches out to it, half without thinking, and he can’t help but sigh when Steve leans into his touch, into the cool metal of his fingertips. 

“I know it’s late, or it’s too early, but -- significant date,” Steve says, carefully, his hand wrapped around Bucky’s wrist. “Do you remember?”

Bucky nods. “You’ve been telling me. It’s my birthday.”

“You don’t remember it yourself.”

“I think -- I think I remember something. Bits and pieces,” Bucky admits. Faded memories, cracked around the edges, black-and-white and smelling like mud and gunpowder and acrid battlefield hooch. Secret toasts and a foul cigar that smelled like the interior of someone’s boot and tasted even worse on his teeth. Running for his life, and friends -- the Howling Commandos -- laughing around him.

He doesn’t remember the scenes from the actual photograph that Steve has managed to save from time on the move: three children around a table, and a small flat cake, and a glass of too-sugary fruit juice. His sister, Steve had explained, and the scrawny boy who had been Steve himself, before Dr Erskine had gotten ahold of him. And the boy who was Bucky, festooned in scrap-paper streamers, grinning, reckless and full of overflowing overweening youth.

There’s nothing to be done for that image that doesn’t call up any reactions. There’s only this, the here and now, and so: Bucky pulls Steve onto the bed. Pushes and pulls Steve into position, so Steve has a lap for him to crawl into, and he wraps his arms around Steve and marvels at the breadth of Steve, the strength of Steve, that carries him around when he can’t and won’t take another step forward.

“Love you,” Steve mutters, into the nonexistent spaces between them -- and he stays in Steve’s arms for a moment, until he feels Steve tug gently on the feathering ends of his dark hair, falling well past his shoulders now. He’s due for a trim, and he knows it, and he would rather ask for help putting his hair into a braid. 

“Come on,” Steve says, and this time Bucky follows him, up and out the door, and -- 

There’s no one there, there’s no one but the two of them, but that the others have been here: that much is clear. Bucky had padded through an empty kitchen, the collection of couches and squashy cushions half-hidden in the gathering dusk, and he’d gone to bed just as the last traces of sunset fell below the New York City horizon (not the Brooklyn one with the bridge in its flame-lit glory, it’d been a while since he had the strength to make it out there).

But now there are presents on the kitchen counters. There is food on the table. A handful of candles.

Steve looks proud and abashed at the same time. “I told them it was your birthday.”

Bucky says, “They wanted to come here and -- sing.” He shudders as he says it. An entirely involuntary movement. The others are good company, in ones and twos. He doesn’t want to test the limits of his tolerance quite yet. 

Steve smiles, as though he understands, and nods. “Yes. They did. I think Sam and I managed to talk them down. Thank Clint, too. He said he’d knock everyone out with some trick arrows he’d been saving. I don’t know if he was kidding.”

“Maybe he wasn’t,” Bucky says, and he remembers a long night of beer that didn’t affect him and a story that did: the press of an ice-tipped spear into Clint Barton’s heart. 

Steve’s mouth twists. “Maybe he wasn’t.” Then he points to the table. “Anyway. They’re not here, but the presents and the food are, and -- these are all for you.”

“For my birthday,” Bucky says.

“You can open the presents now or later, it’s up to you -- but the food, well, you should have some now.”

The cake, in pride of place on the table, is -- even to Bucky’s sleep- and pain-jaded eyes, beautiful. Dark layers of chocolate cake sandwiched with thick nearly-solid chocolate fudge, and every layer decorated with berries, vivid color in the candlelight, like a dream of a cake, a dream of sweetness and light.

Bucky insists on sharing a small slice with Steve, and in the end he smashes berries and cake in his fingers and offers the mess to Steve: who laughs and eats from his hand, careful precise movements of teeth and tongue, cleaning Bucky’s fingertips.

The coffee is freshly made and darker than midnight, and he pours three spoonfuls of sugar into it and stirs, and sweet steam wreathes his face and he can breathe, and face another slice of cake. 

“Presents later,” Bucky says after he pushes his fork and plate away. And -- “Except yours, where’s yours?”

Even in the candlelight he can see the blush rise in Steve’s cheeks. It makes him smile and reach out to Steve again -- but this time Steve dodges and shakes his head and extracts something flat from between two oversized boxes. One of the large boxes is wrapped in brown paper and kitchen twine, and the other is wrapped in tape and crumpled pastel-striped and polka-dotted paper.

“Here,” Steve says, and -- it’s a frame, and inside the frame is something that pings insistently at Bucky’s memories.

Because he can’t remember the exact _when_ , but he _can_ remember: twenty-five cents and a curtain that had become grubby from the lines and lines of people wanting a photograph -- but how could anyone mind the expense, how could anyone mind that there were other patrons waiting not-so-patiently in line, when for thirty seconds the world outside didn’t exist at all?

He takes the frame, and traces Steve’s smiles -- skinny shoulders and perpetually weedy blond hair, swimming in his overcoat and his meticulously knotted tie. 

He traces his own face. The him in the photos is not wearing a military uniform, is wearing shirtsleeves and suspenders and a cap, and Bucky remembers, not the hot flash of photography, blinding, but the smell of popcorn and the tinny sounds of faraway impatient conversations. 

The last frame of the narrow strip shows them -- kissing. Chaste and brief, Bucky remembers. They’d had no time for anything else, and didn’t want to risk anything else.

“How?” he asks, and that’s all the question he’s got right now.

“Same place I got the other one. I guess we did manage to leave a record of ourselves, back then -- I just didn’t expect to get any of it back. I’ve got more. Been waiting for good days. Wanted to share them with you.”

“I’d like that. Later?” Bucky asks, and the rough rasp around the edges of the words is something he might tentatively call -- hope.

“Later. Want to bring the cake to bed?”

“Yes, please.”

He kisses Steve, and Steve kisses him back, and -- this is them, now, just as they had done, all the way back then, in the confines of a small booth, kissing heedless and reckless.

**Author's Note:**

> Initial inspiration from ["If I Ever Lose My Faith In You"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6U16BzBfJ6A) by Sting.
> 
> The cake in this fic is [missminifer's triple-layer chocolate fudge cake](http://ninemoons42.tumblr.com/post/77186869073/missminifer-triple-layer-chocolate-fudge-cake).
> 
> \-----
> 
> I am also on [tumblr](http://ninemoons42.tumblr.com/).


End file.
